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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25475575">Still Life</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/amalin/pseuds/amalin'>amalin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Magical Portraits</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2003-06-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2003-06-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:08:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,517</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25475575</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/amalin/pseuds/amalin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-war. Actually, post-death.</p><p>[Originally written and posted in June 2003.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Still Life</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It takes a few years for the magic to settle in. It's a complicated process, this replication of life, and when Harry Potter finally blinks for the first time he has been dead for six years. Hermione is the new Minister of Magic, though all the Weasleys resent her for defeating Percy. Beside Harry on the wall, Draco Malfoy is still frozen. He looks like an angel.</p><p>Harry hadn't wanted his portrait done. Once he had realized the lasting quality of wizarding life, he had gone on a rampage and cut up all his photographs. His own eyes had winked up at him as he attacked the photos with scissors; when he found Colin's stash of negatives, he had burned everything at once. "I don't want to exist in twenty thousand autographed photos," he'd snapped at his friends when they questioned him. "When I'm dead, I'm <i>dead</i>." Ron had been in charge of eliminating stray pictures of Harry during the war. He had always secretly resented the job, but anyway, now he is dead. So is Harry. Harry forgets this sometimes.</p><p>He remembers everything up to the time of his death, the way someone living might, and is fairly sure who secretly commissioned the painting. He is going to have a shouting match with Draco once Draco wakes, so loudly that the entire Ministry will hear. Propping one's chin in one's hand, leaning forward, elbow on knee, is not the most comfortable way to spend six years.</p><p>Once Draco wakes, however, Harry is so incensed with him that he does not acknowledge Draco for another year. It is not so long as it seems; both spend the majority of the time sleeping off the spells. Life art takes time.</p><p>Now and then an adoring fan or an old friend will visit the Memorial Hall located in the basement of the Ministry, light a candle, and usually cry a bit. Harry doesn't understand the crying. It seems irrational to cry over someone who was even cheated by death and sits snoring above you. He waves sometimes to them, says hello, but usually feigns sleep to avoid conversation. It works well, except on Hermione, who launches into detailed updates of the living each time she visits. </p><p>As if Harry cares about the wizarding world any more.</p><p>Living as a painting is a farce of immortality. It's actually quite uncomfortable, as Harry feels at times that even the air he breathes is thick like paint, but he gets used to it. </p><p>Still, he'd rather be a ghost. Or really, just dead.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>"Are you going to forgive me any time in the next two centuries?"</p><p>Harry watches stoically as the candles flicker in the dim light of the hall. He realizes, upon his detailed inspection in an effort to ignore Draco, that there are other portraits across the hall. He really has no curiosity as to the subjects. He finds that he doesn't care much about anything anymore. </p><p>"If you don't answer me, I'm coming over there," Draco threatens. His hair is tickling his face. Harry wonders absently if Draco regrets telling the artist to paint him that way.</p><p>"No," Harry answers, because he likes his painting just the way it is, and has no desire to confront Draco about what are now the concerns of another lifetime. Even so, he isn't going to forgive Draco. The door creeps open, and he sees two figures silhouetted by the light. A father—Harry doesn't care if he knows him, and keeps his eyes closed—and his small daughter, carrying a sad bouquet of flowers to lay at the base of the central memorial statue. It is of a nameless wizard dying at the feet of a robed Death Eater, and the candles all around it on the floor flicker as the girl steps close. Harry does not open his eyes until they go.</p><p>"All you do is sleep," Draco comments, sounding bored. "If you won't talk to your demanding public, I will. I do so enjoy Granger's endless speeches."</p><p>Harry glances over to him. His vision of Draco is skewed, as he is on the wall beside him. He says, "Would you like me to count how many ways you betrayed me?"</p><p>"Two," Draco says simply. "I loved you when you made me promise not to. And I helped the Dark Lord engineer your death."</p><p>Harry does not ask why. He wonders, maybe, faintly, but he doesn't care enough to ask. "Three," he corrects instead. "You had my portrait done. You know how I feel—felt?—about it."</p><p>"I was afraid I'd be lonely," Draco whispers to him, in the dim candlelight.</p><p>Harry ignores him and sidles out of his portrait. When you're dead and one-dimensional, Harry has found, it is easier to walk away from things. Even if you're walking sideways.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Being is a portrait is a strange thing. For instance, everything—upon close inspection, since the magic blends it well—is painted. It is not wet or textured like paint, but it is nevertheless exactly the way it sounds; it is like living in a painting. Harry wonders if he is real, if his thoughts are his thoughts or some flawed interpretation of magic, if perhaps he has the wrong memories, if his mind is truly his mind or a magical invention. He is, after all, dead. However, usually he doesn't think those thoughts, because if he thinks too hard about it he is afraid that his brain—if it exists—will explode.</p><p>The portraits at Hogwarts always seemed happy. Harry wonders if he is the only one with such an annoyance at being half there after his body has gone. He doesn't want to still be thinking. He doesn't want to be sitting in his chair, chin in hand, staring out at the crying visitors to the memorial, wishing he were dead. Except he is already dead.</p><p>The other strange thing is the way the paintings end. If Harry looks to his left, he sees white. If he looks to his right, or above, or below, he sees white. When he sits in his chair and his feet go over the edge, they simply <i>disappear</i>, though when he pulls them back up, they're there. Harry often sits cross-legged just so he can reassure himself that his entire body is present.</p><p>Harry wonders if Draco has the same thoughts. He wonders if, for Draco, being a painting is far less romantic and wonderful than Draco expected. He never asks, however. Usually he just sits and waits. The time passes faster than he thinks it will. Most of the time, Harry feels like a painting. He can't explain it, only that he has no desire to move, to live; he isn't, after all, a person. He's a replication of one.</p><p>He sleeps a lot. He never dreams, though, nothing substantial. When he remembers anything, it is just shapes and color. Paint.</p><p>Sometimes Harry wonders if there is an afterlife, and another him is enjoying some angelic heaven or being tormented for war crimes in the depths of a fiery hell. It seems strange to think of, since this consciousness is the only one he has. It worries Harry that there is another him out there, as much as it distracted him to think of a thousand photographs and portraits lingering when he was gone. He wonders sometimes what would happen if there were other portraits of him: would they think the same thoughts, be the same people, or what? He doesn't want twenty thousand Boys Who Lived populating the wizarding world in pictures pasted everywhere.</p><p>And the newspapers, what of that? Harry had most of them burned, but he couldn't do much about it. He read somewhere that photographs only capture a moment of someone's consciousness, whereas portraits encompass the entire person, their thoughts, their being. This is minor comfort. Photographs are snapshots. Paintings are expressions of life.</p><p>If this is the afterlife, he thinks, he would still prefer oblivion.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Leaving one's portrait is like an out-of-body experience. It is whiteness, and you cannot see yourself, but you are conscious of your own thoughts and the sounds of what is going on outside, if anything. Harry realizes, when he leaves his portrait, that this must be how the portraits at Hogwarts knew everything. They must have reported to Dumbledore.</p><p>Clever, he thinks, but doesn't much care. He usually stays a few steps away from his own portrait, afraid he won't be able to find his way back if he goes elsewhere. He does not have an interest in exploring other paintings, and doesn't, until he needs an escape.</p><p>Harry finally remembers to ask Draco why he had Harry killed. It doesn't carry the same importance now, doesn't hold the same rage, and Harry asks almost nonchalantly. Draco, however, looks pained at the question. Harry figures that Draco's been pondering the answer for the past ten years.</p><p>"It was the only way he could be defeated," Draco finally says heavily. "You should understand."</p><p>"Since when have you cared about the rest of the wizarding world?"</p><p>"Maybe since you stopped," Draco shoots back. "Those last days, you were so—it was like you were already dead. I thought it would be different after."</p><p>"After I really was dead?" Harry hisses, but the enmity in his voice is more because he feels that it should be there. "This is ridiculous. You used me. You betrayed me. And now I'm stuck hanging next to you for the rest of eternity."</p><p>"I'm sorry," Draco offers petulantly.</p><p>Harry does the only thing he can do, which is run away.</p><p>The whiteness envelops him, stark and comforting, and the voices outside blur as he moves away from his own portrait and into the uncharted territory of the Ministry. Draco catches up with him just as Harry stomps into a painting of water lilies in a swamp. Harry sinks to mid-thigh in the mire, dark water sloshing cold and paint-like on his skin. He disrupts the lilypads and they go scattering, stems twining about his legs. Draco splashes in after him, as heedlessly unaware as Harry was, yelping at the cold. Water lilies stick to them, the petals daubs of white paint.</p><p>"You can't avoid me," Draco says. "There are only so many paintings in the Ministry."</p><p>Harry feels for the first time, the anger shivering in the pit of his stomach as the water seeps into his clothes. "Why can't you leave me alone? This is all your fault, and I'm already stuck with you for eternity! Can't you just leave me alone? I don't want to see you! I don't want to talk to you! I don't want to sit next to you every day and listen to you sleep! I want out of this and I want to be dead, but I'm not, and it's <i>your fault</i>!"</p><p>The look in Draco's eyes is a rare one; he looks hurt and vaguely remorseful, which stirs a seed of guilt in the midst of Harry's anger. He starts towards Draco, suddenly sorry, wading through the mess of lilypads.</p><p>"I didn't mean—" Harry begins, but Draco's hands are wet and clammy when they slip up to Harry's cheeks. Draco's lips are warm and, while tasting more like paint than Draco, something Harry finds he has missed.</p><p>"<i>Ahem</i>," says a voice, stern and motherly and familiar all at the same time, and both of them turn to the woman standing before the painting tapping her foot. Harry has never seen Hermione look so embarrassed. "I'm holding a meeting," she snaps, flustered, and sends them splashing away with a look. The businessmen seated around the table with her look equally flustered.</p><p>Harry is surprised when Draco knows the way back to their paintings. He is even more surprised when settling back into his chair feels like coming home.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Hermione visits the next week and yells when Harry feigns sleep and Draco smirks at her. "Harry Potter," she shouts in her best Molly Weasley voice, "you open your eyes right this minute!" When Draco chokes back laughter, Hermione fixes him with a death glare, and he slides out of his portrait to avoid her wrath.</p><p>"Yes, Hermione?" Harry feels odd, addressing her like this, when she is pacing before him so obviously alive and he is but a mess of pigment on canvas with a touch of magic.</p><p>Her voice softens a bit, but not much. "A secretary came up to my office yesterday, complaining that you and Draco were—that you were in the painting hanging behind her and—" She is embarrassed again. "Oh, Harry, this is the Ministry! I've had complaints all week! Just because you've finally made up doesn't mean you can—you can make everyone else uncomfortable!"</p><p>Harry laughs.</p><p>"<i>Harry Potter</i>," Hermione says threateningly.</p><p>"You take things a lot less seriously when you're dead," Harry mutters, a reminder that sobers Hermione. Harry hadn't meant it that way. Being dead is something he takes for granted, something he wishes for in quiet moments. Hermione, however, looks shocked and immediately apologetic.</p><p>"Be more discreet?" she pleads, and Harry agrees, because he hadn't meant to upset her. He forgets sometimes that she's alive, because everyone else he talks to—like Draco—is dead already. After awhile, they settle into more mundane topics, and yet Harry cannot help but notice that Hermione is businesslike even in casual conversation. Perhaps she is, in her own way, also dead.</p><p>"Do you miss Ron?" he asks out of the blue, and again does not expect the wince that flashes in her eyes. Living people are so sensitive.</p><p>"Sometimes," Hermione says, voice a quiet wisp of regret. "I try not to think about it very often."</p><p>"Is that why you threw yourself into the Ministry?"</p><p>She looks up at him with pain in the wetness of her eyes, both admonishing and startled. "D-don't be silly, Harry. This is my career. I never would have been made Minister if so many competent people hadn't died in the war. I'm lucky, and I'm glad I was able to have a hand in reconstruction."</p><p>Harry pushes, "But that's why all you <i>care</i> about is work, isn't it?" When she doesn't answer, he adds—more coldly than he means to—"There are always pictures, you know. If you have the right magic, they'll even talk."</p><p>He is sorry the moment Hermione's lip trembles and she leaves hastily, but he doesn't say anything, and knows that he never will. Draco returns and tells him he was cruel to her.</p><p>"I didn't mean it," Harry says. "I just don't <i>feel</i> things the way I used to. It's different."</p><p>"Yes, it is," Draco agrees, and slips into Harry's portrait to rest his chin on Harry's shoulder.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>This is what it would be like in a perfect world, Harry thinks one day, when Draco is off eavesdropping on the Head of the Department of Magical Catastrophes and his pretty young secretary. This is what I used to dream of, back then, tied down by the war and the sides we were forced to take. This is how it would have been, if Draco and I would have had the chance to be ourselves, and not two people the world hung upon. No pressures. No other loyalties. No <i>world</i>. Just us.</p><p>Harry realizes that this must have been the dream Draco had in mind with his portraits and his ideas about death. He realizes how frustrated Draco must have been, and of course, irrational as Draco is, this would have seemed the right way out.</p><p>Just another type of life, Harry thinks sourly. He still hasn't forgiven Draco. He kisses Draco and he admits to having missed Draco's arms, but it is hardly the same, and Harry still doesn't want to be here. There is something surreal about everything, these painted scenes, and Harry feels as if his life is not his own. Then again, he thinks, his life is gone, passed on, extinguished, and he is holding on to a magical spark that imitates life.</p><p>After Hermione's warnings, they are more careful; they explore mainly at night, when the only ones around are the quiet janitors directing the brooms with their wands. Hermione has a fanciful picture of a garden paradise in her office, full of sunlight and a thousand butterflies. They alight on Harry's and Draco's shoulders when they sit on the sun-striped rocks and tangle together. Draco thinks it is thrilling and romantic. Harry doesn't feel much. From the edge of the painting, he can see Hermione's desk and a small framed photograph of Ron. Ron waves to him, and Harry smiles sadly before waving back.</p><p>The magical world is obsessed with eternity. He remembers Nicholas Flamel and the philosopher's stone. He remembers the extended life, Dumbledore still spry at one hundred and fifty years old, their life somehow spiced and sustained by the magical spark. He remembers the thousands of paintings littering Hogwarts, each person's small piece of immortality, and thinks that it is silly, really. Commission a portrait and live forever!</p><p>"You're all just scared of death." Harry is murmuring his words more to Draco's shoulder than Draco himself, but he is sure that Draco hears him. He expects a pause before the answer, but Draco's reply is light.</p><p>"Why?" Draco looks down at Harry, shifting to meet his eyes, perplexed. "We don't have to be."</p><p>And Harry knows he is right.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There is a fire.</p><p>The Ministry should have expected it, really, what with all the candles. There has been an influx of tapestries, new portraits settling in who gape at Harry and Draco as if they are rare specimens, and on the twentieth anniversary of the war's end, a line of people to light their own candles and nurse their own memories of their dead.</p><p>Harry and Draco hide out in Hermione's office for the duration of the day, which irritates Hermione at work, though technically it is a holiday and she is not supposed to be in.</p><p>That night, in a room flooded with flickering candlelight, on the twentieth anniversary of peace, the memorial goes up in flames.</p><p>Draco is snoring faintly, head on his chest, and looks like a slumbering angel. His hair is in his face. Harry has to seize him by the elbow to wake him up and drag him bodily into the relief of cold white nothing. Draco is not fully awake until they plunge into the frigid water of the lily pond, shadowed by the darkness of the meeting room.</p><p>Living is an instinct, Harry thinks, as he watches Draco shiver and wipe away the droplets that have splashed on his cheeks. There is faint moonlight settling over them, cold and caressing, and the edges of him are blurred. Painted.</p><p>He doesn't <i>want</i> to want death more than Draco. At least, he doesn't want Draco to think he wants death more than Draco.</p><p>Harry leans down and trades the moonlight with Draco's lips, as cold as the heat that seared the edges of their paintings, and Draco's mouth is just as hot, as desperate, as the licking flames. Harry feels their edges, more real than anything in this painted, blurring world; their heat challenges his half-life existence, threatens the foundations of his world of canvas, and he doesn't mind because he is <i>alive</i>. Here, in this moment, he can <i>feel</i> it.</p><p>"You can't cheat death," Harry tells Draco's jaw with his lips.</p><p>"But we have." The water is seeping into them, cold and wet, pulling them down. Harry wonders for a fleeting moment what would happen if he drowned himself; he would be a dead portrait. But he doesn't want to die falsely. Not again. "We all do, don't we? That's what this is about."</p><p>"It's not playing fair," Harry says, and sees Draco's Slytherin smirk in his mind before it curls on Draco's lips. "And you cheated <i>me</i>. I want—I want—"</p><p>He wants to feel real, the way he does at this moment, as if he is not living in a world of paint and unsatisfying afterlife, as if he is not just one-dimensional and the creation of someone else, as if he is not made only of imitation and that even his love is a painted farce. He wants to feel as if he is living, and that he has a choice, and that he is not trapped within a picture frame the way he has been all of his life—both lives.</p><p>"I want to know if you'll follow me," he whispers, and slips out to his left—sideways, moonlit, like a flash of silver. For once in this twisted frame-to-frame existence, he is alive. He can already feel the heat, the fire. And maybe, for the first time since he opened his eyes to the dim stone of the memorial, since he felt the disconcerting feeling of waking in a world of nothing but paint, maybe he forgives Draco. He thinks he senses Draco behind him.</p><p>Perhaps.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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